


He is Fire, He is Pain

by scribblemyname



Series: The Burning [6]
Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Friendship, Mutation Manifesting, Post-X3, Reconciliation, Romance, mutations, post-cure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-06
Updated: 2014-08-06
Packaged: 2018-02-12 01:36:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2090943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/pseuds/scribblemyname
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If he keeps telling himself she never could love him, he never could love her, he'll get over it. He doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. He is Fire, He is Pain

**Author's Note:**

> Canonical Notes: Set shortly following the events of X3.
> 
> Acknowledgements: Thank you to starlight2twilight and ChamberlinofMusic who loved and reviewed this fic religiously and to PlonkerOnDaLoose who greatly improved it by being my beta. Thank you to pygmymuse for the shredding. :grins:

\- Too -

Pyro stares at the ceiling of the special high-security prison for mutants: his current residence. It is night. The inmates are mostly sleeping, though he knows the guys in one cell down at the end play cards.

He closes his eyes, trying to sleep. It's a futile effort. He hasn't slept since he got here two days ago. He's heard the guards talking. They're going to try to cure him, and he stays awake and alert, convinced he can stop them when they do.

Pyro rolls over on the narrow cot to look towards the aisle and jumps back, stifling a yell.

Katherine Pryde is standing in his jail cell.

She looks like a shadow on a moonlit night, her form nearly invisible, and he wonders if she's phased.

"What are you doing here?" he demands harshly.

Seeing her stirs all sorts of feelings in him that he doesn't want to feel. He's spent so long trying to forget. Love. Joy. _Her._ It's not for a mutant like him. If he keeps telling himself she never could love him, he never could love her, he'll get over it.

He doesn't.

\- Late -

He narrows his eyes at her when she continues to stare silently and impassively.

"Kitty, Kitty," he says in his harshest, most dangerous voice. "Didn't you know it would come to this?"

Hatred blazes into Kitty's eyes and she flings something down at his feet. It lands with a noisy clatter.

He stares.

His lighter.

"I. Will. Forget. You." The words are bitten out, each one sharp and distinct.

Pyro swings his head up to look at her, stunned. He takes a step off the cot, toward her.

She steps back and spits out, " _Pyro_."

He stills. She's never called him Pyro. Never once. Not even one time.

"Kitty, I—" He never gets out the...apology?...or whatever it is that could make this better, make this right.

Kitty closes the distance between them, balling her hands up in his shirt, and forcing him to look at her. "You _left_ us. You _forgot_ me." Her words are hissed in anger. "I _will_ forget you."

She backs away, breathing hard.

He stares at her.

Too late for words. Too late for love. The story of his life.

She phases and steps out of the cell.

"The cameras." He remembers. "They'll see you."

Kitty shakes her head once, hard. "I'm good at that," she whispers, waving a phased hand through the bars. A slight smile that makes his insides sick curls up her mouth. She had always been his innocent kitten, sweet, unconditionally forgiving no matter how many times he tried to push her away. When had she gotten so hard?

Then she's gone.

He stares at the lighter. He bends over and picks it up.

_"I will forget you."_

He snaps it open with furious rage spilling into him and reaches for fire, letting the flames grow and grow and consume him. It's all he has left, and there's no one left to save him.

He is fire. He is pain.

\- For -

Bobby stares at the television screen, dropping suddenly to the couch seat beside Rogue. She shifts her body away.

"How did he get out?" he shouts. "They were supposed to _cure_ him!"

"Quiet," Logan orders as he turns up the volume.

The students and staff have converged in the media room to watch a news report about the fire last night where Pyro was being held. His was the only body not accounted for, a fact Rogue already knew.

She glances briefly at Kitty, but quickly tamps down on her reaction and looks away.

The phaser doesn't look at anybody. She stares at the television with unreadable eyes, her face like a stone.

\- Words -


	2. Sorrow Burns; She Fans the Flame

\- I -

Kitty settles down on the cold concrete at the top of the steps leading from her apartment porch to the ground. It's dusk and a chill, bluish light settles in shadows across the view of lower New York.

"That about does it, y'all. You boys go on ahead. Ah'm gonna stay with Kitty."

Kitty doesn't look up when she hears Rogue, self-proclaimed southern belle, shooing off the men back to the mansion. They tromp past her down the stairs, few glancing back. Rogue settles beside her on the top step.

"Beer, huh? Pass one over, sugah."

Kitty reaches blindly and hands Rogue a beer, then tosses back her head and downs the last of her Miller Lite.

\- Will -

"You goin' to be okay, sugah?"

Kitty shudders. That's the million dollar question, isn't it? Will she get over him? Will she forget? She nods despite her doubts. She's left everything of John's behind. She's thrown out all her pictures, left mementos, treasures, back at the mansion, gotten her own place as far away from the memories as she can go. All that had been left was the lighter.

"I will," she states calmly and meets Rogue's concerned gaze, stares into those emerald eyes that sparkle and shift and pierce through her soul as she lies. "I will."

Rogue sighs deeply but drops her probing stare. She looks out on the view. "If you say so."

Rogue won't ask more questions. She helped Kitty destroy John from her life, just as Kitty helped Rogue when she destroyed Bobby from hers.

The two friends sit on the top step of Kitty's new apartment stairs, swigging beer and watching as the last of the light fades from day.

\- Forget -

It is night. Rogue finally had to go home and now Kitty faces her entire life boxed in cardboard, lying about her own living room and around her bed.

She drags a blanket in from the master bedroom and settles it on the couch. She heats up some soup in the microwave, sets it on the little end table. It takes her a bit to figure out how to get a fire going, but she succeeds and grabbing the blanket, her food, and the first box, she settles in on the floor in front of the fireplace to begin unpacking.

Pictures.

Kitty smiles at the faces of her family, childhood memories, and her friends from the Institute. Xavier's had been more than a school. It was her second home, when her first rejected her along with her new mutation.

Jubilee had been the first to welcome Kitty among the students, Ororo Munroe among the staff. Then came Bobby and John and Piotr and Paige and Rogue.

She rubs her fingers across the faces, the absence of John among them stinging only slightly.

She flips slowly through the stacks until she suddenly stops—and stares.

She missed one. How could she have missed one?

He's smiling. The only time he ever smiled for the camera. She had begged, pleaded, cajoled to get this picture of him smiling on the front steps on her birthday. Smiling _at her_.

Kitty cries out and flings it into the fire. The flames flicker at the edges and start to burn.

John would like that.

She cries out again and phases her hand into the fireplace, and fishes out the shot, blows it out, stamps it out on her new carpet. She stares at his smiling face surrounded in the charcoaled edges of her aborted action. She shudders, her shoulders convulsing, and throws it back on the fire.

John would like that, the fire, the burning, the irony.

Sorrow burns. She fans the flame, allowing it to consume her as she finally gives in and cries.

\- You -


	3. Fire Aches Beneath His Skin

\- Didn't -

Pyro has been through enough horror and pain and fear in his life, he never thought there could be anything traumatic enough to trigger a secondary mutation. He's seen it all, been through it all.

He was wrong.

Just one slip of a gir— Pyro can't bring himself to think of the reason behind this aching beneath his flesh, this heat rolling about in his belly like a hatred, an unadulterated pain.

Betrayal.

He slams his fist into the side of a building as he walks along in the darkness of a New York night. He's free. He's fire. He's—

He cries. No one can see him now.

He drops to his knees. The aching intensifies.

And the fires begin.

\- You -

_He was a little boy, frightened, merely six years old. His world came crashing down in the light of his birthday candles. They danced and grew and flickered into dragon-shaped flames, grew to consume the house, his home._

_His parents' screams._

_He couldn't save them._

_St. John was left alone in the corner of his house as it burned down around him until he pulled himself out of the rubble three days later and left the bodies of his parents to find shelter of some kind or another. It was all too easy to slip past fire trucks and police vehicles, letting them all think he died in the fire, and seek out his friends and the friends of his family for help._

_Former friends, that is._

_No one wanted him. A mutant. A dangerous one._

_He couldn't save them._

_"No one even_ tried _to save you?" she demanded, disbelieving, when he told her_.

 _He shook his head at her sharply. "I didn't deserve to be saved, Kitty._ _I couldn't save_ them _." The memories of that horrible, terrible_ _day_ _when he killed his own_ parents _washed over him with unbearable heat_.

_She looked at him, her eyes wide and hurt. Her mouth glimmered in a frown, then smoothed out._

_"I will," she stated calmly._

_"What?" He narrowed his eyes in confusion. His gaze locked onto hers. "Kitty?"_

_Kitty reached out one slender hand and laid it on his chest. "I'll try to save you," she said._

_He stared at her. She gave him a tiny smile, so genuine, so real, that touched the core of his being_.

_Slowly, he drew her nearer, gently lowering his head to hers._

_"I'll save you," she murmured._

_Then he kissed her._

\- Know -

Magneto finds him in the park, flicking his lighter, making dancing shapes out of the fire.

"We meet again," the silver-haired mutant speaks, apparently having lost none of his stately dignity.

Pyro sneers at him, having nothing to say. He saw this man once as a savior, a sort of messiah. The dignity now is a mockery. The knowing eyes don't know anything about him.

There's no one left to save him.

Magneto steps forward. He doesn't recognize the threat. Or maybe he does. The lighter refuses to open again.

Pyro looks up.

"The war is not over," Magneto says.

Pyro scoffs. "I'm not a pawn in your war. Get a life." He stands up, starts to walk away.

He feels the pull, recognizes the draw upon the iron in his blood. He turns, feels the ache, the burn, the cries. He'll never be able to save them now. He gives into it. The fire draws upon his blood.

"Magneto." The word glints like a knife in the threatening tension between them.

Magneto raises one eyebrow, one hand. "You're mine, Pyro. I made you, strengthened you."

"You're wrong." Pyro laughs.

He makes no move for the lighter. He doesn't need to.

\- It -

The fire leaps from his body, roiling up from the flesh, searing through his clothes without burning, creating more of itself as it billows outward and wraps around Magneto. The man is screaming, beating at the licking flames.

It's out of control now, and all of Magneto's release cannot stop what he has unleashed.

Fire burns. And burns.

And burns.

\- Would -

Shiro Yoshida frowns intently at the television Remy had left on. "Remy! Come here!"

Remy LeBeau materializes silently by the couch. Shiro glances into the dark red irises glowing against the black in Remy's eyes. Those eyes had earned him the nickname _Le Diable Blanc_ , the White Devil.

"Fires, hein?" Remy is a Cajun with a thick accent and peppers his speech with bits of French.

Shiro still doesn't know what half of it means, so he ignores it. "New York is burning," he says. "In patches. A moving focus. Sound familiar?"

Remy slips toward the coffee table, moving like a liquid shadow, catches up his bo staff from where it had been lying, gathers up the remains of a card game, pocketing the deck, and flings the words over his shoulder, "Don' wait up for moi. Goin' hunting."

Shiro stares at the screen before flicking it off. Another mutant out of control. Fool that he was, if he could, Remy would save them all.

\- Come -

Storm stands among the other members of the X-Men. Between the news reports and their friends throughout the city of New York, it is clear that fire has broken out in one of New York City's many parks and spread uncontrollably through almost a third of the city. The sky is darkening with ash. Emergency teams are evacuating the surrounding areas. Firefighters are pouring in. She wishes she could feel some pity for the mutant involved, but she has long since lost the ability to feel more than sorrow that he walked away from every hand that ever reached to save him.

"I will go," the weather goddess decides aloud. "We need rain."

The team agrees. No one else follows her though. This is not a mutant they will be bringing home.

\- To -

The cold hard pavement scrapes his skin, and the heat rolls across the sky in blazing arcs, out of control. He's lost track of Magneto, of time, of the fires he's begun.

 _"I couldn't save_ them _."_

"Homme. Y' okay?" a strange, thickly accented voice calls through the flames.

John looks up through the hazy smoke and sees a man wearing a trench coat crouched in front of him, unafraid in the midst of the licking fires emanating from _him_. Is the man crazy? he wonders vaguely.

"I couldn't save them," he whispers. The fire aches beneath his skin.

_"I will," she stated calmly._

The man leans forward, offers a hand. "C'mon. We c'n help y'."

And rain starts to fall, first in little droplets, then hard, pelting down on him. He turns over, trying to feel it on his hot flesh. Benediction.

_"I'll try to save you."_

"Do you _want_ t' be saved?" the man demands in the voice of one who knows just what he is asking. His red eyes blaze as though on fire.

_"I couldn't save them."_

John stares at this devil-eyed mutant before him with the knowing look, the all too knowing voice.

"Save me," he whispers.

A strong hand clenches his. He cannot help but see the scars as he is pulled from the last vestiges of fire dying in the rain.

_"I'll save you," she murmured._

\- This -


	4. Pain has Scarred Him for His Sin

\- Do -

It is John's first real food in days and he devours it readily. He doesn't really taste it, other than to note it's spicy and it's filling. Everything is still just a blur around him, little more than the cold water drying on his back, surrounding walls of a spacious apartment, and a vague disquieting heat beneath his skin.

"Y're name, homme."

John stops and stares at Remy. For once, he's at a loss. "She called me John," he finally says.

Remy nods slightly. Shiro, the other occupant, gives a dark-eyed look full of understanding.

"Y' got a handle?" Remy asks.

"Pyro." John grimaces. "Not sure—"

"Pick later," Shiro says, the straight shiny dark hair of his Japanese heritage falling into his eyes and obscuring the darkness further. "When it doesn't hurt."

"Dishes won't wash demselves," Remy says abruptly, pushing away from the table.

John scrapes off the last food onto his fork and eats it, then follows Remy into the kitchen. It's large, comfortable, clean. "I'll help."

"Bien," the devil-eyed mutant responds. "Y're s'posed to."

\- You -

"Where do the scars come from?" John asks, gesturing toward Remy's hand as he passes him a clean dish, dripping water.

Remy arrests his motion, pulls the dinner plate back toward him and stares down at his scarred hands, the crisscrossed web of pain in red and silvered skin. He narrows dangerously bright red eyes at them, and John thinks the irises are burning.

He's never been afraid of fire.

"De charge," Remy says softly. "Firs' few times I blew t'ings up, I didn' let go in time." His voice is a mere whisper of its usual confidence and his eyes are far away. Then they narrow in on John with a laser-like focus, the soft, shimmering burn suddenly sharpening and congealing into a brightly distinct ring of bloody color. "Y' live, mon ami. Y' learn."

\- Want -

John looks at Shiro then. "What's your power?" he asks. In the course of mere hours, he is coming to know these people and something about them fits him better than any of the places he's been before.

They ask questions, but they don't demand answers. They help each other, but they've all been burned.

Shiro shrugs, eyes on the table.

Remy watches closely. "We're none o' us team players, mon brave. We fight our own fight, pick our own battles, keep our own counsel, non?"

"Yeah." John places a dry cup in the cupboard. He gives a half smirk in lieu of something more genuine. "You learn."

\- To -

All lessons in the Cajun's household seem to start in the kitchen.

They are washing up the breakfast dishes in the morning when Remy hands him a soapy cereal bowl and asks, "How d' y' walk?"

"What?"

Amusement dances in the blood red eyes and John starts to feel a little concerned.

"How do y' walk? Is it hard? Can y' control it?" He holds out another plate. "Hurry up, mon ami."

John hurriedly places the dry dish in the cupboard and grabs the next one. "I just walk." He rinses off the soap and dries the plate almost haphazardly.

Remy squints toward John's hands with a disapproving eye. "Not really de point, hein?" he says in that confusing way he has of mixing French with English. "De point is, does it get y' where y' want t' go?"

He holds out a cup.

John makes no move to take it, staring, almost frozen, at the Cajun.

"Y're gettin' distracted," Remy says dryly.

John takes the cup. No. Walking has never taken him where he wants to go. He slowly rinses the suds down the drain.

Remy's hands are still. "Now, how d' y' powers work?" The voice is calm and quiet.

Somehow John doesn't think that's the point. "What are you getting at?" he demands as he clanks the last dry dish into the cupboard.

Remy leans back against the counter's edge, an annoying smirk edging at his mouth. "I ain't goin' t' tell y' how to control y'r powers, homme. Don' matter. Don' matter if you want t' let dem all out or hold dem all in, hein?"

John narrows his eyes at him.

"Where d' y' want to go?" Remy continues. "Figure dat out. Den figure out how t' get dere."

He mutters curses and put away the dish towel.

And learns.

\- Be -

John lies on his borrowed bed, staring up at the ceiling. It's night. Crickets chirp somewhere outside.

He sees her face in the flames above his head and he considers the pain that has scarred him for every sin he's ever committed with his powers.

_"Pick later. When it doesn't hurt."_

He rolls over onto his side.

It still hurts.

_"Know where y' want t' go. Den figure out how t' get dere."_

\- Saved -


	5. Burn the World and Come Within

\- Know -

"You don't owe me," Remy says, tilting his head toward Pyro standing in the doorway. The white devil had sprawled on the couch after a particularly nasty job.

John, also known as Pyro, says nothing. His eyes burn and dance and tighten as he measures Remy.

"I wouldn' do that t' y'," the Cajun continues, leaning his head back onto the back of the couch and closing his eyes. "I've owed too many people. Sold m' soul too many times."

The two men remain in a comfortable silence as John takes in the words, the truth of what is being said. Remy LeBeau has spent a lifetime owing, and now he pays back into the lives of other mutants. He has even corralled the dangerous Pyro and given him skills Xavier could never impart.

"I want to do something," John says.

Remy cranes his head to look at him. "If y' do somet'ing, it's because y' wan' t'."

John says nothing.

"I'm a T'ief." Remy sighs and sinks further back into the couch. "Master T'ief of the Guild, ranked t'ird in de world." He grimaces. "Told y'. Owed too many people."

"That what Shiro does?"

Remy waves his hand noncommittally. "Sometimes." His reply is cryptic. Glowing red irises on black swivel up to meet the intent gaze of the pyrokinetic. "Y' still wan' in?"

John's eyes dim, then burn with the intensity of fire. "Yeah."

\- Where -

She's the last person he expected to see. She stands there, meticulously putting herself back together, smoothing out the loose ends and shouldering her pack after floating from ceiling to floor.

It's Kitty.

A harsh expletive rolls off his tongue. He instantly freezes.

She utters a tiny startled gasp, complete with jump as petite as she is. Her wide chocolate-colored eyes find his just as her foot comes down on a stop valve with a ringing clang and they both wince.

Remy would kill him. They're here for a heist and giving away his position to _anyone_ is something he was trained long and hard not to do.

Something hisses, then whines. John curses internally, then the water spews out of the pipes in a loud, focused stream. She pushes at the piping, but the water only gets louder. He holds his breath, knowing they could get caught any second. He hurries into the small space between walls and plumbing where she's at, sloshing into the water, shoving her against the wall, and bending over to tighten the valve. He sees now why Kitty was ineffective. It's a wonder she could move it to begin with.

He manages to seal the valve. He hears something in the hall and immediately moves for the wall, only Kitty's already there and he finds himself suddenly all too close to her. His _her_.

She's wet on her legs with her arms embracing herself, her beautiful eyes staring up at him uncertainly. They breathe together, trying to keep the sounds quiet as they wait.

No one comes.

He realizes she's shivering. His hand dares to reach out to touch her and her eyes close halfway, concern flitting in her eyes. He forces himself to drop his hand, but frowns as he studies her.

"You cold?"

She stills. Her eyes still stare at him. She's still shivering.

\- You -

His eyes darken and he leans in closer to her. She catches the ghosting of his lean, hard muscles beneath the tight shirt and the almost shock of gentleness in his gaze. He lifts his hand again, not touching her, just coming so close and moving his hand as if he can _feel_ her. She shivers again, as if she can feel him.

Warmth licks at her feet, her legs. Her eyes widen and she looks down to see the flames rising around her, wreathing her limbs with an impossible tenderness and climbing upwards, caressing her shoulders, her face, warming her without burning. She shudders.

She licks her lips, wanting to whisper his name as she looks into those dark, unreadable eyes and the unreadable face, but she cannot. His name has died from her lips. She hasn't been able to say it in the months since she broke him out, moved out of the mansion, gave up on him ever being who she thought he was.

"You're the enemy," she says softly.

His face hardens almost imperceptibly. The fire bursts into greater heat, then almost lazily returns to the prepossessing warmth he has been lavishing on her. "Not anymore, Shadowcat." John also speaks softly, not whispering, not hissing, just so soft she can barely hear him.

Kitty hears the name and restrains herself from flinching, lifting her chin instead. "Why should I trust you?" she asks.

He smirks a little and his eyes dance with a fiery light. "I don't know. Why should I trust you, here where no good little X-Man ought to be?"

"I'm recovering previously compromised data," she says flatly.

The fires die in his eyes. He leans one hand on the wall beside her head and she suddenly shudders again at this entrapment. She is cornered by Pyro, burning with his flames. _If he let go of his control, even for a second_ …

"I can't trust you," she says, horrified by her realization, and somehow she isn't so defiant anymore. "You're not someone I can trust."

\- Want -

"Maybe not, but I know where I want to go," he says, breathing against her so she cannot help but shiver in the unnatural heat. It is not unpleasant. "And I _will_ get there. God help me, Kitty, I will."

She wonders what he means for one aching, breathless moment and the fires die slowly from her body.

His hard, warm hand slides under hers and he forms a cup with her fingers. He covers them briefly with his other hand and then pulls away. A blazing heart of fire lies on her outstretched fingertips.

She nearly chokes on the meaning.

He turns and strides away on his long legs and she trembling, sinks to the ground. The words try to whisper in her throat.

She finds her legs, her strength, and pushes off from the cold, hard wall toward his retreating back and forces the word, his name, past her lips from where it had died.

"John!"

\- To -

John stops, his fingers hesitating on the edge of a wall. He looks back, over one shoulder, eyes dancing, not catching her gaze.

Kitty reaches him and suddenly shyness overwhelms her. She glances around herself, then suddenly stares directly up at him. "Where?" she asks, desperately, quietly.

He studies her, his dark eyes lit with an internal flame. His hand stretches out and touches her cheek with soft intentness.

She bites her lower lip and waits for his answer.

With the smallest of sighs, he releases her and steps away. His eyes do not release her though, and she is captured in their depths as he speaks. "You."

The word refuses to register.

She blinks at him, opens her mouth and closes it when she finds there are no words, opens it again, but still there are no words.

He leans over. So close. Her mouth is open. She does not realize that it shouldn't be until it's too late.

He kisses her. John, Pyro, kisses her.

And she doesn't push him away.

The sweet heat filling her this time isn't fire, but it's burning her world and coming within, deep into her soul. She clings to him and kisses him back with her own furious longing, denied in lonely nightmares as she waited for him all these months, waited for _this_ and didn't know it.

"You'll get there," she whispers between kisses, not caring who else hears her, just so long as _he_ hears her. "John." She sighs.

He holds her tightly.

"We both will."

\- Go -


	6. Coda

_he is fire, he is pain_

_sorrow burns, she fans the flame_

_fire aches beneath his skin_

_pain has scarred him for his sin_

_burn the world and come within_


End file.
